Back From The Garden!

I see that the last time I posted something was back in March.  That was when the weather turned nice and I was out in the garden every chance I had.  The weather is turning dismal again and I am back in my craft room.  My sister came up from Florida and helped me rearrange some things to make my craft room a little more organized.  Organizing created more space and therefore led to a shopping spree to take up that new space.  These are the new goodies:

 

It was hard to get a picture without the glare but I think you can see everything.  I went to A. C. Moore and they had EVERYTHING in the store on sale for 40 % off and sometimes more than that.  So of course more ended up in my basket than I had originally intended.  The items that I am most excited about are the "Typewriter" stamps.  I bought upper and lower case and can't wait to use them.  (the butterfly on the package is one that I stamped on vellum and colored with markers and perfect pearls.)  I added a couple new colors of acrylic paint in the hopes that I will pull out the gelli plate to make some prints.  I added Tim Holtz "Autumn Gatherings" die, a "thing a ma.jig (I've wanted one of these for a while now) and I bought several stamps to add to my collection.

I can't wait to spend some good crafting time with all my new stash.  In the mean time here are a few pages that I worked on but haven't posted yet.

I did this page a while ago.  I love the stampotique stamps.  I used the gold varigated flakes and a heat glue medium for the angel wings.  I stamped the girl on a separate piece of paper, colored her with markers, cut her out, stamped the image on the page and glued the cutout over the stamped image.  The circles were done with inka gold (in red) through a stencil and then embellished with a black Pitt pen and a white Signo pen.  The angel was left unfinished for quite a while.  It took me a while to be inspired before I created the "creeper".  This page started as a waste page.  I used it to clean my stencils or stamps.  After looking at it and wondering what to do with the page, it came to me that the angel needed an admirer. So I used the same methods to create "creeper"  Then stamped the words and embellished with the white Signo pen.

NEXT

I used this Hummingbird stamp to create the next page. 

 

 

I stamped the image on the page and then went about doodling.  I colored it using glitter pens.  You can see the glitter a little better when you enlarge the picture.

This is a close up of the bird to give a better view of the shiny glitterness!

This is the most recent page and commemorates a road trip that I took with my sister.  We were "trying" to get home from Marion, Illinois and ended up going the wrong direction.  We had directions from mapquest and two GPS's and we were still, going very fast in the wrong direction.  The nice police officer did not give us a ticket AND pointed us in the right direction.  I can't wait for the next opportunity to be on the road with my sister again.....never a dull moment.

I Love Learning New Techniques!

I am taking an on-line mini Workshop by the very talented Valerie Sjodin.  She shows how to create the beautifully creative edges to her art journals as well as fitting words to spaces and painting with fluid acrylics.  Sooooo much information in a mini workshop.  This is my first journal cover that I created.  I have a lot more practicing to do.  I started out using fluid acrylics on the edge but I didn't like the results I was getting.  I switched to markers and liked the colors a lot better.  Valarie is planning a larger Workshop and I can't wait.  The deadline for this workshop is Sept 1, 2013  and is open until November.  It is SOOOOOOOOOOO worth it,

Art

A doodle page from my Art Journal and a couple of backgrounds.  I have no idea what I will put on the two backgrounds but I sure do like how they turned out.

Working With What You Have.

I did the background on this page a few weeks ago and I hated it.  I was trying a method that I saw on the Internet and for some reason I chose gray as my main color and added barn red highlights.  It reminded me of a big boring ugly battleship.  So I decided to leave it for a few days and come back to see if I changed my mind..... I didn't.  Since I had some time today, I thought I would play with it and see if I could save the page.  I really wish I had taken a "before" picture.  It looks completely different from where it started.

I had no idea where I was going with it.  I started by adding some more colors of acrylic paint (turquoise and Ivory).  I tried some stenciling with spray inks but they seemed to just sit on top of the paint.  They didn't absorb. I finally sprayed some Dylusion ink and it took.  I stamped the bird because I thought he was cool and I was going to do some layering with other stamps (that didn't happen).  I added the lace down the side because...well, lace makes everything look prettier.  Next I stamped the lady on a scrap piece of card stock and colored her with water color pencils.  I stamped a crackle stamp with Sepia Archival Ink over the image.  I used a stencil  template and drew an oval around her and cut her out.  I distressed it using Tea Dye ink.  I placed her on the page and decided that more was needed.  So, I tore some newsprint scrapbook paper to frame her in.  I used Vintage Photo distress ink on it.  Next, I added the flower that I made a few days ago.  I tore paper for leaves and distressed them with Vintage Photo ink.  I doodled around the frame and the flower.  I hot glued the feathers using a piece of paper that I punched with a half inch punch.  Then I was looking for some type of quote or saying to put on the page.  I found this quote from Jane Eyre, "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."  I thought "perfect, this makes the page look like it was well thought out", when in fact it just evolved!

I think I'm getting pretty good at my Zentangling.  These were done on small cards about the size of a business card.  The top one I used a stamp design for the middle and Zentangled around it using different patterns.  The next two are various Zentangle patterns. The last card is a method called stacks.  I saw an on-line tutorial on this page http://rainbowelephant.com/slapple-and-soft-stacks-pattern-share/#more-1542 and I thought it looked fun.  These will be my new book markers.

First Attempts at Art Journaling

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 This was my hall for the day.  Michael's Craft store had a coupon for 15 percent off your entire order and one for 50 percent off of any one item.  So this justified my getting all these goodies to add to my stash.  In the upper right corner is chipboard with a metal ring.  I thought this would be fun to make various art doodles or journals or something.  The items below that were in the dollar bin.  They will be great to embellish pages. The black pens are a set that has various weights to them.  These will be fun to use while practicing Zentangles.  The white markers are watermark pens.  Can't wait to try them. The rest are all stamps that I thought would be fun.  Oh and I left out the stamp pad....it is watermark ink also.


Now onto some of the art that I have been playing with....Remember a few weeks ago, I didn't know the first thing about how to doodle.  So I have come a long way.  I will never have great artistic skills but I can at least get by and have fun.

 This was done the day that I had my eyes dilated.  I had also bought some color pens and started playing with doodles and filling them in with patterns.

These were ideas for different patterns.  I always go brain dead when I try to think of patterns.  This way I can have a little library to refer to.

Soooooo, I was hoping that if I doodled exercising that I would lose a few pounds!  If only it worked that way.  Anyway, I think these little stick figures were cute.

This was done after a day of weeding my garden in the hot, hot sun.  It seemed like I would never get ahead of the weeds.  I think they were growing back as soon as I moved to another spot.

 This was after I saw a picture of a cat and dog and I thought, "I can draw that."  Hence the question mark after the word "cat".  I think the dog turned out okay.

 Now I am getting my Zentagle on.  This site http://tanglepatterns.com/category/a-tangleshttp://tanglepatterns.com/category/a-tangles has a list of wonderful patterns and tutorials on how to do them.  These are examples of my practicing.  The page on the right has a few more drawings.  I saw a card with the little girl with the jump rope and it inspired me to try it.  The other little lady with the flower was inspired from a journal page that I found on the Internet.  For the life of me, I can't find the page to give credit.

So now I have my steno pad that has my pencil drawings.  I vintaged it up a bit by spilling my coffee all over it.(Insert sheepish grin here)  More Pics of the same style of little girl and Zentangle patterns.

 

More pattern playing. 

This was done after the coffee was spilled and explains the reason for the spill.  I was mad at my daughter and got up in a huff and knocked over the remainder of my coffee. 

This was my very first attempt at Zentagling.  The next few pictures are the first pages in my official Art Journal.

This is hard to read but it says "In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt"  I like that since I do a lot of gardening in the spring.

I don't have anything on this page yet but I worked on the background and when I have some brilliant inspiration, I will put something on it.